Geotechnical Engineering

Professor Information:



Dr. Dipanjan Basu is a Professor in the Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering at the University of Waterloo (UW). He was an Assistant Professor at the University of Connecticut before joining UW. He is a Professional Engineer in the province of Ontario in Canada, and a Chartered Engineer and Professional Engineer in India. Professor Basu is a member of several learned societies in the U.S.A., Canada, and India. He has served in the editorial boards of multiple journals and in multiple committees of the learned societies. He has delivered several keynotes and invited lectures in the U.S.A., Canada, South Africa, Argentina, India, China, and Kazakhstan. He has won multiple awards in the U.S.A., U.K., and India. He hails from Kolkata, India, and has lived in India, U.S.A., and Canada.

Professor Basu is a geotechnical engineer with diverse interest in mechanics, mathematics, numerical methods, renewable energy, and sustainability. He teaches courses on Geotechnical Engineering and Numerical Analysis. He has taught several professional and university short courses in the U.S.A., South Africa, India, and Ethiopia. Professor Basu’s current research focus is on Geothermal Energy, Soil Structure Interaction, Life Cycle Assessment, and Pile Foundations. “From fundamentals to applications” ¾ he likes developing theories based on the principles of physics and mechanics, and finally produces results that are useful in practice. He has over 150 publications with more than 60 refereed articles in reputed journals.


 

  • Soil Behaviour
  • Pile Foundations
  • Constitutive Modelling
  • Soil Structure Interaction
  • Geothermal Energy
  • Sustainability Assessment
  • Soil Dynamics
  • Load and Resistance Factor Design
  • Ground Improvement
  • Probabilistic Analysis
  • Energy harvesting/bio-energy
  • Energy storage
  • Renewable energy



Giovanni Cascante is a Professor in the Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering at the University of Waterloo. He was previously taught, and was the Undergraduate Associate Chair for UWaterloo’s Civil Engineering program at the United Arab Emirates (UAE) campus.

Professor Cascante’s research interests include non-destructive testing of civil infrastructure using mechanical waves, using non-contact vibration measurements for processing digital signals, studying the numerical simulations of wave prorogation, and analysing dynamic soil characterization. His current sources of research funding are from NSERC, CFI, OCE, MTO, Thurber Engineering Ltd., Golder Associates, and Waterloo Geophysics Inc.

Apart from UWaterloo, Professor Cascante is affiliated with Professional Engineers Ontario, the American Society of Civil Engineers and the Canadian Society of Geotechnical Engineers. He is also affiliated with the Environmental and Engineering Geophysical Society, and the Venezuelan Society of Seismic Engineering.


 

  • Non-destructive testing of geo-materials
  • Soil dynamics
  • Resonant column testing
  • Surface waves
  • Ultrasonic pulse velocity
  • Field testing using mechanical waves
  • Laboratory testing using mechanical waves
  • Earthquake geotechnical engineering
  • Numerical simulation of wave propagation
  • Geotechnical Engineering
  • Nondestructive testing of civil infrastructure
  • Digital signal processing
  • Non-contact vibration measurements
  • Dynamic soil characterization
  • Smart Infrastructure
  • Water


 

Mark Knight is an Associate Professor in the Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering, as well as the Executive Director for the Centre for Advancement of Trenchless Technologies at the University of Waterloo.

He specializes in buried pipeline soil structure interaction, buried municipal water and waste water pipeline condition assessment, repair, renovation and construction using trenchless technologies. Professor Knight is the developer of the System Dynamics Financially Sustainable Buried Infrastructure Asset Management tool, BoreAid, PPI- BoreAid, PPI-PACE and CIPP CALC.

PPI-PACE is an online tool developed for and released by the Plastics Pipe Institute (PPI). The purpose of this tool is to assist industry professionals in the evaluation and selection of Polyethylene (PE) pipe for pressurized water distribution and transmission main systems by completing design calculations.

Professor Knight holds a patent for the Centrifugal Permeametor. This invention provides a sample chamber for a centrifugal permearmeter in order to test permeant conductivity of a porous sample. He is also the contributor and editor in “Trenchless Technology: Planning Equipment and Methods” (published 2013) on the chapter Horizontal Directional Drilling and Project Planning.


 

  • Trenchless technologies
  • Buried Infrastructure Asset Management
  • Horizontal Directional Drilling
  • Geotechnical Engineering
  • Centrifuge Modelling and Testing
  • Unsaturated Flow in Soils
  • Contaminate Transport
  • Pavement Design and Field Instrumentation
  • Water
  • Coupled thermal
  • Hydraulic, mechanical
  • Chemical phenomena